Galatians - Walk In The Footsteps Of Faith - Andy Cain

God Centered Theology

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Martin Luther said that the true living faith which the Holy Spirit instills into the heart simply cannot be idle.

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Let me repeat that. That's a wonderful quote. One of my more favorite guys to read.

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I'd be very fortunate one day to be able to spend some time with him in eternity. I'd love to pick his brain. The true living faith which the

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Holy Spirit instills into the heart simply cannot be idle. See, the Christian life is not an idle life.

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It's a life fueled by a true and living and active faith which is rooted in the salvation of God which is born of the

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Spirit of God. If you remember in John chapter 3, it says you must be born of the Spirit, born from above.

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It is not enough to simply see the footsteps or see the path. And we have this... Oh good, that came across good.

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Hopefully see some footprints there. Just in case the light...

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I think, yeah, I probably want the best picture. Yeah, the light kind of covers up. It says, Walk as disciples in the footsteps of Christ.

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A good picture I thought was neat. But it's simply not enough to just see the footsteps. You can see them.

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You can see the path. It's not enough just to know what God's holy and errant word says. It's not enough to just know the right path.

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One must actually walk the path. In this life, one is either under a curse or under blessing.

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And this is what we find ourselves looking at today in chapter 3 of Galatians. Paul has sort of, in a way, been building to this point.

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And he wants to make this abundantly clear. And it's like I've said in many sermons past. You're either in Adam or you're in Christ.

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You're either unregenerate or you're regenerate. You're either lost or you're saved. There's really no in -between.

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There's no shades of gray. It is that black and white. Every person will stand before God one day.

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And they will stand before Him either in salvation and in righteousness or they will stand before Him in judgment.

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And because God is not only a God of love. He's a God of judgment, a God of righteousness, a God of holiness. He's all those things.

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He's all those things perfectly at all times. And you'll either be under a curse or under a blessing. And we'll see this when we move through.

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But when it talks about the fact that the one who is hanged on a tree is accursed, it isn't actually getting hung on the tree or hung on the cross that makes you a curse.

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You become that curse. You're hung on the tree. You're hung on the cross because you were cursed. So those that will be in hell, those that will die in their sin, loving their sin, choosing their sin, loving their sin, they won't stand before God and say, well, you know, you did this to me.

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No, they will die and go to hell because of their own sin. Because they've rejected the Savior. They've rejected

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God's Word. They've rejected the truth of the shining light of the gospel. And so in Galatians 3,

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Paul at this point, and different people take it differently, the way

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I see this, he sort of is capping off and sort of, in a way, bringing to a close the point and the understanding that he started in verse 1 of chapter 1.

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He started off defending the gospel and he is now at this point in chapter 3, defended the gospel.

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He's refuted the false teaching of the Judaizers, which was in contradiction to the truth.

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He's made it clear that to trade, and we looked at this last week, that to trade the truth of God's Word for anything else is complete and utter foolishness for the genuine believer.

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And so now, he sort of shifts into what his main focus and his theme is going to be.

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He's going to spend the rest of this book, the rest of this epistle, outlining and detailing what true

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Christianity really looks like. What is the true gospel all about? How does it affect someone's life?

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Why is it the true gospel over and against the false ones that are out there? So he sort of caps it off by making it clear one last time here, and this is very key here, so don't miss this, the true people of God are not those who are circumcised, although you may be circumcised.

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It's not those who keep the law, although God's people should keep and follow

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His Word. It's not those who were of a certain ethnic lineage, although some of God's people are of Jewish descent.

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No, the true people of God from all ages are those of faith in God. The true people of God, the genuine believers, will walk the path that God has established, not as a means of their salvation, but as a result of it, as a result of their salvation by faith.

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They've been united with Christ by faith, and as a result, they will walk as He walked. Now, obviously, we will not do it in sinless perfection.

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Our example, our mediator, our high priest, we've looked at this on Wednesday nights in Hebrews, the great high priest.

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He certainly walked in a way none of us can walk because he's the perfect, sinless Son of God. We one day will be glorified as He is.

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We will one day be sinless as He is, but the reason He could make the sacrifice

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He did is because of who He is. The reason we needed the sacrifice

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He made is because of who we are. So in Galatians 3, we're going to pick right back up where we left off last week.

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In verse 6, it says, It's not being

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Jewish. It's not what church you go to. It's not how many Sunday school classes you've taught.

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It's not being a pastor. Being a pastor is great. Not going to get me into heaven.

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Faith in Christ will. Being Billy Graham won't get you into heaven. Being really cute, as a cute newborn baby is, will not get you into heaven.

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Faith in Christ will. Faith in Christ is what gets you into heaven. You can have the Bible memorized from Genesis 1 to Revelation 21, and that won't get you into heaven.

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It is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. So you always hear a lot of people that sort of take their eschatological paradigm or what they believe about prophecy and end times.

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And you'll see them, and I used to be one of these people, you'll put it on top of everything you read in Scripture.

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So to where everything you read in Scripture is done through the lens of what you believe about how the world's going to wrap up.

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So you'll see this almost a hyper -separation where, and unfortunately, I won't name the name, but there's one preacher in Texas on TV that will flat out tell you he believes there's a separate path of salvation for Jewish people than there is for everybody else.

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And it's just simply not Scriptural. Being Jewish does not save you. God obviously called out the

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Jewish people and separated them from the pagan world and has worked many things through them. And Romans chapter 3 even covers this.

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What advantage is there to being a Jew? Well, there's all kinds of advantages, but not in relation to your justification.

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Because he skips and goes right into chapter 4, which we're going to look at in a minute. He says, what advantage did

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Abraham have according to the flesh? None. It was his faith that saved him. Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham and the

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Scripture foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, not by works, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying,

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In you shall all the nations be blessed. Now we've got a couple different things going on here. In verse 8 here where it says,

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In you shall all the nations be blessed, is a quotation of Genesis 12. If you like to take notes and go back and look later,

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I won't be going and reading that, but that's a quotation of Genesis 12. And so here we have New Testament Scripture on the authority of the apostle

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Paul equating the blessing given to Abraham in Genesis 12 with those of faith.

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So you can't say Genesis 12 was meant just for Jewish, ethnic Jewish people. It's meant for those of faith, and Paul makes that clear here.

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The true people of Abraham, the true people of God are those that are united by faith. Now, we're going to look at this in just a minute.

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Now, salvation has always been by grace through faith. Now the content of that faith has obviously progressively changed over time as God has gone from speaking directly to people in all the different ways

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He's spoken to everyone to now we have the completed canon. So revelation has been progressive in that sense, but it's always been by faith.

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He says in verse 9, So then those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. So if you have faith in Christ and you are of faith, you have faith in Jesus Christ, you are blessed along with Abraham, just along with Abraham.

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All the blessings to Abraham are blessings to us because we are united with Him according to our faith.

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Verse 10, he continues and says, For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse. And see, this is where we're coming back with this curse thing.

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So you're either under curse or under blessing. If you try to follow the law, or really you don't even have to follow

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God's law, any attempt to earn your justification, earn your salvation other than faith, if that's your means of salvation, notice what he says.

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You go on down to verse 12, it says, But the law is not of faith, rather the one who does them shall live by them.

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That's a quotation from Leviticus 18, I believe. What that's saying is if you want to live by the law, if you want the law to be your salvation, if you want the law to be your justification before God, you will live in eternity only as far as that law will take you.

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And we know the law has made none righteous. The law has made none alive in Christ. Only the

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Spirit of God can make someone alive in Christ. Going back to verse 10,

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For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, for it is written, Cursed be everyone who does not abide by things written in the book of the law.

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It's quoting Deuteronomy 27, 26 there. And it says, Abides by the book of law and do them.

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What it was pulling out in Deuteronomy and why Paul's reiterating this here is he's trying to say if you want to live by the law, if the law is going to be your righteousness, which the

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Old Testament's already made it clear that's filthy rags before God. But if you want the law to be your righteousness, go ahead, have at it.

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But you better be perfect. God requires perfect righteousness to enter His kingdom.

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There are zero exceptions. Nothing but complete and utter perfection and perfect righteousness will enter the kingdom of God, which means one of two things.

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Either you've got to be that on your own, or you're going to have to have that given to you because we are not righteous.

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We looked at Romans 3 previously. None not righteous. Our throats are an open grave. There are none who do good.

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There are none who seek after God. No flesh is justified in God's sight in and of themselves.

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So that poses a really big problem because how is a man... What's really interesting, you go back to what many scholars think was the first book of the

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Bible written, Job. Job is pretty much a consensus. You've got a few others that disagree.

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It's not a big deal. But many people believe Job was most likely the first book written in two different places.

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In Job 9, I want to say Job 20, somewhere in there. Two different times, one of Job's friends and Job himself ask, how can a man be right with God?

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So way back in the Old Testament, before there ever was Jesus in the

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Incarnation, before there ever was a Joseph and Mary, before there ever was a Herod, before there ever was a cross, man was asking the question, how can

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I be right with God? Well, the only way you can be right with God is to have perfect righteousness.

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So you either have that in and of yourself or you'll have it credited to you. Thankfully, we have the very righteousness of Christ credited to us to where when we stand before God, He'll see us as being perfectly righteous, even though we're not.

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But that's why He says, if you're going to go by the law, God has no objection to that, but you better keep it and you better do it perfectly because the sin in one account is the sin against all of it.

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And so basically the only reason, and we'll see this later in Galatians, the only reason the law was there to begin with is to be a schoolmaster, to lead us to Christ, to show us that we're sinners and we can't do it.

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Moving on, he says, verse 13, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.

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This is the basis for substitutionary atonement. He became that curse for us.

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In a very real sense, you can say this in two different ways. He collectively, in the sense

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He died for all the believing ones, but you can make it very unique. You could say, I deserve to be on the cross.

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He died specifically in my place because if it had only been you, He still would have done it. If I had been the only person that He had come to redeem,

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He still would have done it exactly the same way He did with no difference. Cursed is everyone who hanged on a tree so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the

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Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith. He's kidding on this once again.

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You remember it was last week when we were talking about don't trade the truth for foolishness.

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Remember in verse 2, let me ask you only this, did you receive the

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Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Every single Christian receives the Spirit and he comes down here and caps it off in verse 14 when he says, we might receive the promised

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Spirit through faith. They're cursed because they're under condemnation.

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You remember Romans 8 .1, it says, therefore there is now no condemnation of those that are in Christ Jesus. What's the flip side of that?

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What's the flip side mean? That means if you're not in Christ Jesus, you're under condemnation. John 3, we love verse 16, but so many people fail to read what comes after it.

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It says, if you haven't believed in the Son of God, you're already under condemnation. You don't have to sin to become cursed.

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You're already cursed. You're born into this world cursed. As beautiful as my little girl was when she was little, she was under a curse.

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She was under sin. We sin because we're sinners. We don't become sinners because we sin. To borrow a cliche.

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So in moving over to Romans 3, I like to usually cross -reference writers with themselves because that way you can keep things in context.

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But in Romans 3, verse 28, it says, For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.

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Well, just in passing, all those that really love to question the

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Pauline authorship of books, they're going to have a hard time doing that when Paul basically says the same thing in one book that he does in another.

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Because this is Galatians 2 .16. This is Galatians 2 .15. This is Galatians 2 .17. He's saying the same thing.

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He says, For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from the works of the law. Or is God the God of Jews only?

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That's what we were just talking about, wasn't it? Is He the God of Jews only? See, if the people of God are not the people of faith, if God is not the

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God of people of faith, then who is He the God of? Is He the God of Jews only? Is He not the

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God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith.

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Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means. On the contrary, we uphold it.

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The whole point he's making in Galatians 3. And we're going to see this very vividly probably one or two weeks from now when we get to the end of the chapter.

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I've quoted this many times in sermons, Galatians 3 .28. There's no Jew, there's no Greek, but there's one in Christ. And the one in Christ is united by faith in Christ.

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He's not just the God of the Jews. He's not the God of the Gentiles. He's not the God of just Baptists. He's not the

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God of Presbyterians. He's not the God of this, God of that. There's no divisions. Paul handled it now as a separate book, separate context, separate thought pattern.

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But when he's writing to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 1 .10, he says, why are there so many divisions among you?

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Why are some of you saying, I'm of Apollos or I'm of Paul, I'm of Christ? It's like, no, there's

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Christ. Period. Stop going around saying, well, this, this, and that.

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No. He says, there's one God, one faith, Ephesians 4. There's one God, one faith, one spirit, one baptism.

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We're all one in Christ. There's not a God of the Jews and a God of the Gentiles.

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Paul's making it abundantly clear in his teaching on the inspiration of the Spirit without error that God is a

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God of the people of faith, not based in law, not based in circumcision, not based in anything else other than faith in God based on His revelation.

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Now, I told you I'd come back to this. You may not ever think about it. I hadn't really thought about this much until the last couple of days.

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But think about this. Salvation's always been by grace through faith. The content of that faith has changed.

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Think about this. Abel. Remember Cain and Abel? My last name's Cain, only I'm not like Cain who killed his brother

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Cain. But Cain killed his brother Abel. Abel's sacrifice was accepted. Cain's wasn't, right?

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Abel had significantly, substantially less revelation than we do.

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Abel didn't have 66 books. Abel didn't have a Savior, a Messiah that already come and died, been buried, and rose again.

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Abel had only what God had said based on that point in time, which He told them, and it's not recorded for us, but God had told them what type of sacrifice to bring, yada yada, so on and so forth.

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Noah had less revelation than we do. Moses, less revelation.

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Now, all people throughout all times have always had natural revelation. The sun, the moon, the stars, the very turning of the leaves in fall, and all these things, and the

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Bible very clearly in Romans 1 says this is enough to make man have no excuse. But think about it.

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The people of God, while progressively over time, revelation has increased until the completion of the canon, we've all, all, all, all, all of us have had one thing in common.

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One thing that unites all of us. And that is our faith in God based on what

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He has said about Himself, based on what He said about us, and how we can be rightly related to Him by faith.

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So that brings us to Romans 4. What then shall we say was gained by Abraham our forefather according to the flesh?

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Was there anything gained by Abraham by being circumcised? That's what he's saying because at the end of chapter 2 in Romans, if you want to go back and read this later, it gets very detailed in talking about the real

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Jew is only the one that's won inwardly. And that circumcision is of no meaning if circumcision is going to be your faith, if circumcision is going to be your justification.

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Talking about these Judaizers, he's dealing with Galatians. If you want your circumcision to be your righteousness before God, fine.

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Okay, you better keep the whole law too, which we all know we can't. So the true circumcision that man needs is the

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Old Testament circumcision. It talks about the circumcision of the heart. That's what man's greatest need is.

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So when he says, what then shall we say was gained by Abraham our forefather according to the flesh? So was there anything gained by Abraham being circumcised?

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Well, for if Abraham was justified by works, meaning if Abraham had been justified by getting circumcised, which, by the way, came several years after God came to him and told him,

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I want you to leave your country, go to a place I'm going to show you. He tells you, I'm going to bless you. He got circumcised after that.

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Don't forget that. But if he was justified by that, he would have had something to boast about.

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Abraham could have stood before God and said, well, I'm circumcised. I did exactly this,

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I did this, I did that. I mean, think about it. If that was the case, I'd be looking for the latest checklist.

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Okay, what's God going to accept? Go to a Baptist church, go to a Presbyterian church, whichever one it would say. Oh, check that.

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Make sure you wear or dress a certain way of church. Oh, check that. Make sure you give a certain amount of your money in the bar plate. Oh, check that.

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Make sure I do this. All these little things, make sure I'm nice to my co -worker, whatever it is.

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Okay, I've done all this. Ha ha, you've got to let me into your kingdom because I did this, this, and this. Abraham would have had something to boast about, would he?

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But notice this. It says, not before God. And I love verse 3. For what does the

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Scripture say? Not what man thinks, not what tradition says.

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What does the Scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.

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I'm so thankful for the inspiration, the inerrancy, and the authority of Scripture because it is based on that authority we can know without a shadow of a doubt that by faith we are saved.

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Our assurance for our salvation is not in ourselves, but is in the very Savior that died on the cross for us.

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What does the Scripture say? It said Abraham didn't work. He believed God.

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And it was that belief, it was that faith, that God counted to Abraham as righteousness.

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Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as is due. Man, when

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I was at Food Lion, you always knew what payday was. You always knew when the truck was coming.

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And you always knew very quickly if the bag with the paychecks was not on said truck because you'd have a lot of angry employees.

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And in my younger days, I'm not too happy. I had to do a lot of repenting over some of the things

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I thought and probably said because of missing paychecks. We all have our sins. We all have our repentance.

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Some of the things I heard in some of the stores about missing paychecks. Let me tell you, it was because it was due.

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You had worked your two weeks, you'd worked your hours, you'd worked whatever. And that paycheck was due to you.

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It wasn't given. It wasn't a gift. Trust me, Food Lion doesn't just hand money out. I've seen them fire someone over three pennies one time.

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You miss your drawer. Most of you that have ever been in retail, you know it's called a till, right? Your drawer, your till.

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If it's off by a certain amount, it's not going to end well. I can't blame them. You don't want just stuff going away.

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But it says, his wage is not counted as a gift, but as is due. If God gave us righteousness based on what we did, guess what you've missed?

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Guess what no longer exists? Grace. There's no grace.

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It's not gracious to give somebody a paycheck that they're owed. Some of you that have employees or if you have your own business, when you give your...

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There's an element of graciousness in the sense you probably love and care for your employees, but it doesn't require any grace to give your employees their paycheck.

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They work for you. They're owed that money. Salvation's a gift. And it is

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ONLY o -n -l -y ONLY by the grace of God.

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Only by the grace of God. Without grace, there is no salvation. Without grace, there is no righteousness.

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Without grace, there is no justification. Without grace, there is no sanctification. Without grace, there's no future glorification.

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Without grace, we don't have the Word of God. Without grace, we don't have a Savior. Without grace, we have no hope.

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None. He says in verse 5, "...to

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the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the godly." It's God who justifies the ungodly.

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No one else. I can't. You can't. Only God can.

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His faith is counted as righteousness. Remember I told you, only perfection, only perfect righteousness will enter the kingdom of God.

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Neither you've got to be it on your own, or you've got to have it given to you. And the Bible says it is based on our faith that Christ's righteousness, all of His perfection, all of His obedience, everything that's wrapped up in the righteousness of Christ is not only credited and given to us by a gift of God's grace, but we're treated by the one who justifies the ungodly as if we're

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Christ. We're treated as if we're holy. We're treated as if we're righteous. We're treated as if we're perfect.

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Our sins can hold no weight on us. They hold no remembrance in the mind of God. He's chosen to set them aside.

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Notice it says, just as David also speaks of the blessing...

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Remember, our context in Galatians 3, only two types of people. Those under the blessing of God, those under the curse, their own curse.

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Just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness.

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It doesn't stop there, does it? Notice what it says in your Bibles, apart from works.

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And then he quotes Psalm 32 here. He says, Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered.

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Blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin. We don't even need anything else, my friends.

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We're going to get to it when we close the sermon in a minute, but this understanding of walking the path and walking the footsteps of faith, that's all great.

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And it's great that we have the Philippians 2 example, let this mind be in you which also Christ Jesus, and we have

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God's word to know how we should live. But if all we had was the blessedness of being in Christ and knowing that no matter how much we've sinned, no matter how badly you've sinned,

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I don't care who you are. I don't care where you've been. I don't care what you've done.

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I don't care how you could be one of the worst sinners to ever walk the planet and God's grace is enough to save you.

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Take it from a guy who wrote the book of Philippians, who in chapter 3 outlined everything that he was.

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You remember the checklist from earlier? Paul said, Hebrew the Hebrews, a Pharisee, asked to the law, zealous.

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Checklist, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom. It's worth nothing. He says,

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I count it as rubbish to gain Christ. If God could save Paul, if God could save that guy who wasn't satisfied with just tracking down sinners.

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No, he went and got letters so he could go to kill them, put them in jail, forced them to recant.

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And if they wouldn't, he'd have them killed. God saved that guy. But don't miss this.

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Your sin, while it might not have been the same kind as his, still sent Jesus to the cross.

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It was still worthy of you spending eternity in hell paying for your sins.

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Never, ever, ever, ever forget about the grace of God in your life.

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Everything that we have, everything that we are is by the grace of God. Starting with and ending with, for He is the author and the finisher of our salvation.

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Moving on to a close, let's ask this question, then we'll answer it and we'll be through. So how does the

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Christian ultimately walk in the footsteps of faith? So you move down to verse 12.

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I'm going to skip this next section of Romans 4. I invite you, for time purposes, to go home later and read the full chapter in context.

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We won't have time to cover it this morning. But in verse 12 it says, And to make Him, referring to Abraham, to make

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Him the father of the circumcised, who are not merely circumcised, but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father

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Abraham had before he was circumcised.

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God justified Abraham and credited him as being righteous based on his belief and his faith before he received the outward seal.

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And I don't have it. It's 400 something years. I don't have it written down. But it was, I think, 400 some odd years before the law came.

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So if the law was going to save, why did God not care about all those people that lived before the law?

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That's an argument you can make because it was never about the law. It was never about circumcision.

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To walk in the footsteps of faith is to walk in the footsteps that Abraham laid out for us. So how does the

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Christian walk in the footsteps of faith? Just like Abraham did. You see, it's our faith that saves us.

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True, genuine faith is never abstract. It's never idle.

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Remember the quote from Luther at the beginning? It's never idle. It's a living faith, an active faith that actively obeys

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God. So while it is not our works that save us, our faith always results in obedience because we've had

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God's law written on our hearts. We've had the Spirit of God indwelling us.

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Remember in Galatians 3, he says, So then those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.

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I should have read the wrong verse. Oh, I read the wrong verse.

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Verse 14. So then Christ Jesus, the blessing of Abraham, might come to the Gentiles that we might receive the promised

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Spirit through faith. Abraham believed God. But watch this.

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Abraham also obeyed God, didn't he? A believing faith is an obedient faith.

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It's not that the obedience and the works save us, but it's the result of our salvation.

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Every true, genuine believer will walk in those footsteps. Think about this. Could Noah? Everybody loves

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Noah, right? We love his good Noah in the ark story, right? Could Noah have really claimed to believe what God said about the flood if he never built the boat?

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Could Abraham have really believed God if he had not actually left his home country to go to the place that God would show him?

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Abraham did as the Lord told him. You can look at this, and if you want to go back and read it later, Genesis 12 and Genesis 15.

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The word of the Lord came to Abraham. The word of the Lord came to Abraham. The word, what

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God had said, came to Abraham. And it says he believed God based on what he said and then obeyed and responded as a response of his obedience.

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So very quickly as we wrap up, three things. And I'm just going to kind of outline these. If you want to write them down, and I purposely did this this way because a lot of times when

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I preach, I'll give you points as we go along and I'll flesh it out myself. What I have a challenge for you to do this time is

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I've given you all the meat first. I want you to take the points, the three sentences, and you go home, read these things, pray over them, meditate on them.

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I'll give you one or two thoughts with each, but I'm not going to flesh it out for you. I want you to spend the time doing it. So what are the parameters of walking in the footsteps of faith?

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Number one, God establishes the footsteps. We simply walk in them by faith.

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God establishes the footsteps. He's the one that put the footsteps in the sand.

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We simply walk in them by faith. So what does that basically mean? It means God's Word is the authority.

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It's God's house. We covered this on Wednesday nights in Hebrews 3. It said Jesus is greater than Moses.

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Why? Because it's God's house. Moses was just a servant over God's household at the time.

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Everybody, every Christian, it's not our house. It's not our church. It's not our righteousness. It's all of God.

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God is the one that establishes. In Proverbs 16, it talks about how a man plans his way in his heart, but it is

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God who establishes his steps. So number one, God establishes the footsteps.

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We simply walk in them by faith. Now, one quick thought, and then we'll move to number two. Think about this, though, and this will be something for you to think about when you're meditating over this.

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While each person's walk of faith will be unique to them, hence our testimonies and our stories, so on and so forth, each path is established by God for His will,

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His purposes, and His glory. That's why we say if you're not walking God's will, and you're not obeying

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God based on what He said, you're not going to bring Him any glory. So number two, we must trust

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God's ways over our own. Proverbs 3, 5, and 8, trust the Lord with all your heart, don't lean on your own understanding, but what...

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I should have wrote this one down. Oh, wait, hold on. I marked it in my

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Bible. Good preacher. Trust the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge

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Him, and He will make your path straight, or direct your paths. So number two, we must trust God's ways over our own.

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And then lastly, number three, walking in God's ways is the only path, the only true path of blessing.

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Walking in God's ways is the only true path of blessing. Psalm 128, 1,

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So number one, God establishes the footsteps, we simply walk in them. Number two, we must trust

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God's ways over our own. And number three, walking in God's ways is the only true path of blessing.

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Now what I want you to do is go home and think about these things in light of Galatians 3, and Romans 4, and Genesis 12, and Genesis 15.

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And think to yourself, if you as a Christian in your personal life, you before God, or if we as a church have not seen the blessing of God, remember the answer is not to be found in ourselves.

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It's found in God's established footsteps, in trusting

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God over ourselves, and then walking in His path. Walk in the footsteps of faith, for there is no other place we should ever want to walk.